They say that no ruler ever had as many poets thronging his gate as gathered at his.
He was wont to remark, “Supporting poets is one of the obligations of princes.”
Two substantial volumes of panegyrics were compiled in his honour.
He seized Aleppo from al-Kilābī, the Ikhshidid governor, in 333 AH; before that he had taken Wāsiṭ. Fortune shifted him from place to place: he held Damascus for a time, after which it returned to Ikhshidid hands, and he defeated the enemy on many occasions.
It is reported that he fought forty battles against the Byzantines, and in most of them Allah granted him victory.
On one Eid he is said to have distributed so many sacrificial animals that they were beyond counting: gifts reached 12,000 people, and many received as many as one hundred beasts apiece.
When his sister died she left him 500,000 dinars, and he used the whole sum to ransom captives.
Kāfūr confronted him, and Sayf al-Dawla triumphed on the outskirts of Homs and advanced on Damascus. Al-Ikhshid then met him in battle and routed him; yet al-Ikhshid’s appointed span ended in Damascus. Sayf al-Dawla thereupon seized the city, dealt unfairly with its inhabitants, and took possession of part of their lands. A year later al-ʿAqīqī and the other notables wrote to the ruler of Egypt, whereupon Kāfūr came to them.
He was born in 301 AH.
His campaigns surpassed those of any other monarch; his bravery became proverbial, and he commanded a special place in people’s hearts—may Allah have mercy on him.
He died of paralysis—though some say of urinary obstruction—in Ṣafar 356 AH. As death approached he took the oath of the emirs for his son Abū al-Maʿālī.
He passed away on a Friday before the congregational prayer. His body was washed, then perfumed with aloe, myrrh, two mann of camphor, and 100 mithqal of ghāliya, and he was shrouded.